Does CAD/CAM Technology Diminish Quality of Life and Quality in general?

This is an important article.What has suffered in the name of efficiency is honesty. Engineers who move ahead are masters of presentation and optimism. The boss listens for what he wants to hear. "I will have it done tomorrow." is much better than "it might take 3 weeks.". Much of the work is done by consulting firms. They care about billable hours, not intelligent design (the type man does that is). As the commercial asked - Were's the beef ?

icconian(Unregistered)08/15/06 11:21 AM

Lower expectations

Interesting point of view. I don't think it's CAD and time-to-manufacture, so much as it is lowered expectations that have been ingrained from our experiences with computing. No one thinks twice when they need to reboot a PC during a workday. We put up with software locking up, we shrug our shoulders at the vagaries of CAD programs & other Name Brand SoftWare. Nobody demands the best when "just good enough" is universally accepted. No sense complaining about bugs & workarounds when no one will bother to fix them, they'll just sell you the next bell & whistle. So, those attitudes carry over to other walks of life. Mundane is good enough.

J. T.(Unregistered)08/16/06 06:57 AM

Case In Point

The article selects a specific medium (e.g. CAD) on which to pin its message. The article engenders a discussion beyond any one medium. As everything in the developed world continues to converge we are increasingly forced to focus on 'good enough,' which often isn't. In the U.S., at the top of the economic food chain, we feel the need to shave wherever possible in order to stay on top. This means the niceties of exacting fit'n'finish become cost items, extras we convince ourselves customers aren't willing to pay for. In many cases, our customers are in the same situation and, indeed, cannot pay for anything beyond good enough.This article itself is a classic self-representation of the topics it decries. It is replete with a lack of grammar checking, spell checking, and the like (e.g. 'thee' instead of 'the', and so on). Not looking to dwell on typos to the detriment of the message, but it is it’s own best example of the problem at hand.Editor, where were you before this was posted?

Er Ramalingam K S(Unregistered)08/17/06 06:45 AM

Golden Blend of 'Clicks ' and 'Bricks'

Dear Readers My opinion is that there are still gaps to be filled when we start using CAD It has to grow a long way to stabilize That does not mean they are not good They are good for faster flexiblity in deisgn , altering the design , fastness in drafting , on line messaging , clarity , visualisation ,printing & easy to get itself for CAM , I mean Computer Aided Manufacturing I do accept that the percentage of curomer returns for various products from various industries are growing after this CAD One way is to have Mentors for the CAD Team while designing and releasing the drawings The Mentors should be from a cross functional team of senior experts - from Design , Manufacturing, Assembly , Marketing and Service And the CAD Designers should be given an opportunity to interact / see with their own eyes of what is what and not confined to their desks alone The fact is that we have to develop a lot in CAD associated Softwares The journey towards perfection is through excellence which is always elusive But let us be on the route We will continue that Anyhow, a GOLDEN BLEND of the 'OLD - BRICKS' & 'YOUNG CLICKS' will be ruling the world by contineous upgradation for the betterment of human society/ living at large

Greg(Unregistered)08/17/06 02:07 PM

Blame the process not the technology.

What leads to poor quality in the elevator? The customer. Period. If the custom will accept a lower level of quality then the manufacturer will make it. It is up to the owner during the walk through to point out the elevator panel and say that it is unacceptable and that it must be fixed. No one else is to blame. CAD and technology are irrelevant to this core issue. If you can complete the drawing/design in X number of hours, then you have just proved that it can be done. People worked just as hard and put in just as many long hours when they pushed pencils. Driving workers for every last drop of productivity is not a new concept that was introduced along with the computer.If the drawing goes straight from the designers desk to the shop with no quality control, then it is a quality control issue. A drawing created using pencil and paper could have taken the same route to the shop. Frank Gehry designed Walt Disney Concert Hall on the back of a napkin. But the engineering and plans were completed using very high powered computers. Which is the better method? Neither. The better method is the one that works. CAD works. CAD saves time. But the quality is unrelated to the medium.

Joe(Unregistered)08/19/06 08:45 AM

THE CHECKER

DRAWING CHECKER:The old fart that made sure the drawing fully defined the part. I hated this guy, until he discovered a mistake that would have cost the company a forture and the loss of my reputation and maybe my job. This guy was the teacher who in time taught me to become "THE CHECKER"

Skyline(Unregistered)08/20/06 04:03 AM

It's About Time

Ever since the introduction oF CAD in ALL spheres of manufacturing, the VERY important role of the checker had been undermined. Progressively, all CAD product manufacturers have added "self checking" features into their products. In the early days, these were very basic, and were nearly always subject to debate on accuracy. Nowadays we are being led to believe that they are the "bible". Not true, nothing that the programmers can instigate can equate to "gut feel", "eye for error", "true professionalisim".We live in a world that demands excellent results instantly, yet in most cases, the basic training does not exist so that the operator can mentally visualize potential traps along the way. And to add to the mayhem that is increasing in all areas, "CAD Operators" are increasingly being given the design roles - they are cheaper (initaily). I too started on the "board", could accurately forecast timeframes, and even though I strove for perfection, I occasionally tripped up. Thank God for "The Checker".Let's not kid ourselves, we must be vigilant, trust the product we use to achieve our aims, but we must NOT retire the Checker.

Norm Crawford(Unregistered)08/23/06 07:39 AM

Re: Does CAD/CAM Technology Diminish Quality of Life and Quality in general?

A simple question deserves a simple answer. No, CAD/CAM does not diminish quality. I too started on the drafting table and was good at it. But I jumped on the opportunity to be on e of the first to use CAD and explored 3D CAD immediately with outstanding results. The interesting issue around quality was that back in those days, engineering required that my CAD models meet the 2D drawings "exactly" and of course the 3D CAD modeling found flaw after flaw after flaw in the design. That of course lead to me being the pain that nobody wanted to talk too. I'll lay odds that some of these guys are still around today and remember. I have also contacted some of these guys over the years and almost all will say that they must have been out of their mind to think that 2D Ink on Mylar was more accurate then 3D CAD modeling for design. You see, when I left, the company felt the unfortunate pain of a single expert leaving. CAD use became a requirement for everyone.
Ah yes Checkers. Well, again some functioned extremely well but the work overload and ability to properly do any sort of accurate tolerance analysis was pretty much non-existant. Howerver, where checkers became doomed is when they "took advantage" of the CAD technology and started sending drawings back for totally non-valued changes that had absolutely nothing to do with quality. They became editors who wanted entire views moved around, endless dimensions positioned slightly different, font changes, text size changes, underline this and don't underline that. So I think it fair that some responsability for the unfortunate doom of checkers be accepted by many (NOT ALL) checkers.
I do however think there is great opportunity for checkers to return to be what I think they really ought to be and that is in dimensional management being specialist in the dimensional management control or tolerance analysis. Stuff that has real value. My guess on the elevator example is that the dimensional control was non-existant or just plain in accurate and again nothing to do with the CAD technology.
I will say this; Original thinking, Innovation, still takes just as long. CAD does not help that, which is often misunderstood. Use of CAD speeds up the development of an idea, but the talent and time it takes to originate the idea is still worth it's weight in gold.

Proof readere(Unregistered)08/23/06 07:54 AM

Quality in Language and Writing - Proof read

It would seem logical that if you complain about quality you would proof read the article to discover any quality problems in your article. Without counting, I would say that there are at least 6-10 errors in grammar or left out words in the first page alone.I would trust your content more and would perhaps have read on.